As you read this article your eyes will move so the words fall on the central part of your vision. This region is called the fovea and it has excellent resolution when compared to your peripheral vision…
Palaeontology has gone high-tech: no more wax and plaster-cast models. Instead, 3D data from computed tomography (CT) scans is overturning long-held views of how the earliest land animals moved.
Research…
The Office of the Chief Scientist today releases the Health of Australian Science report and it’s an intriguing read.
The report was compiled to help the office and the public understand the current state…
Unless you’ve been boycotting all forms of media in the past five years, you’ll be aware that the National Broadband Network (NBN) is well and truly on its way.
For some of us the NBN is already here…
The European Commission (EC) has given Google “a matter of weeks” to address concerns the American search giant has “abused a dominant market position”.
The announcement overnight (AEST) follows an 18…
At the beginning of this year Sandia Labs in the United States announced it had patented a design for a self-guided bullet that could help soldiers at war. The technology is expected to prevent the need…
Albert Einstein made an executive decision to revolutionise our understanding of gravity in a paper published in 1916. Nearly 100 years on, a key prediction of Einstein’s theory has eluded direct detection…
Late last week, Google representatives unveiled a significant enhancement to the company’s ubiquitous search engine. They’re calling it the “Knowledge Graph” and claiming it will support “more intelligent…
The Conversation is an independent source of analysis, commentary and news from the university and research sector viewed by 350,000 readers each month. Our team of professional editors work with more than 2,600 academic authors from 180 institutions.
The Office of the Chief Scientist today releases the Health of Australian Science report and it’s an intriguing read.
The report was compiled to help the office and the public understand the current state…
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stands in front of a Falcon 9 rocket at SpaceX's launch site in Florida.
SpaceX
Late tomorrow evening (AEST), all going well, a Falcon 9 rocket will lift-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A few days after launch the craft will rendezvous in low-Earth orbit with the International Space…
Semantic search is about recognising the meaning of words, not just the words themselves.
Chris P Jobling
Late last week, Google representatives unveiled a significant enhancement to the company’s ubiquitous search engine. They’re calling it the “Knowledge Graph” and claiming it will support “more intelligent…
The global push to detect gravitational waves could provide an enormous return for science.
Wikimedia Commons
Albert Einstein made an executive decision to revolutionise our understanding of gravity in a paper published in 1916. Nearly 100 years on, a key prediction of Einstein’s theory has eluded direct detection…
How can consumers get what they want on an NBN-enabled Australia without getting wires crossed?
NBNCO
Unless you’ve been boycotting all forms of media in the past five years, you’ll be aware that the National Broadband Network (NBN) is well and truly on its way.
For some of us the NBN is already here…
A new study has shown better-than-chance recognition of gay people by participants.
Official U.S. Navy Imagery
In the last few years, several laboratory studies have shown that, to some extent, we can tell whether someone is gay or straight, just by glimpsing their face.
When asked to categorise male and female…
Is Australia's standing among OECD countries of national value, or apples and oranges?
japi14
By Rod Lamberts, Australian National University and Will J Grant, Australian National University
How well does Australia’s science, research and innovation system perform compared to other developed nations?
The Office of Australia’s Chief Scientist has just released a report addressing this question…
Where there's mineral wealth, people always follow.
MGM
As history has repeatedly shown, where there are valuable minerals to be unearthed, adventurous humans will arrive in droves – even if it means battling extreme conditions and risking life and limb.
So…
Syria crisis: the violence mapped by the UN
FreedomHouse
Web 2.0 tools and mobile technologies have lowered the barriers not just for people to access the internet but to create and share content. Through open-source, collaborative programs such as wikis, the…
Despite being considered a scientific taboo in the past, the study of consciousness is slowly gaining momentum.
emmakate deuchars
Until 20 years ago, scientists interested in empirical work on consciousness – our private subjective experiences – hid it by minimising or eliminating the “c-word”, the use of which was a career-limiting…
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